LOL your map shows that Illinois (57k sqmi) is 1/4 the size of SPAIN (195k sqmi) EU = 1.6m sqmi Continental US, excluding Alaska = 3.1m sqmi I'm looking at buying machine tools from a friend in Eugene. That's a hop down and a hop back up. A long day, but nothing unusual. Also the same distance as Amsterdam to Paris.
Yeah that 5-hr drive (plus at least 30-50 minutes of breaks I hope) is just over 3 hours with the high-speed rail from Amsterdam to Paris, despite it having 4 stops along the way. I'd rather hop on a train and read a book or something. Back when I was a student and lived near Rotterdam, it took exactly the same amount of time in minutes to travel to my parents in the north of the Netherlands (a 2hr drive) as it took to take the train to Paris (a 5hr drive). HSR is wild like that. Realistically, it only works well between 100 and ~400 miles. Barcelona-Malaga is 7 hours for 620 miles and I've done much longer HSR trips than that? But most people will still fly. Hell, I seriously considered taking the train to Malaga from here. I can technically get to Barcelona in one day. Malaga would require an evening train to Paris and a full day of trains from Paris to Malaga (two trains of each 7 hrs), which is doable for your average climate fascist, but it doesn't hold a candle to a 3hr flight. I just think that even in the US, there are a ton of trips in that 0-400 mi range that don't need to be flown. Your weekly urban system might've stretched all the way from Seattle to LA, but that's the exception and not the rule.
I mean... you stop when you need gas. If you're lucky you don't need gas very often. I did LA to Albuquerque a few times. You stop for lunch in Flagstaff, at which point you're eight hours in and six hours to go. Lessee - five stops between Seattle and Eugene would be Tacoma, Olympia, Portland... nah that's it. With double the area and three quarters the population, there's just a lot more nothing in the USA. I would love high speed rail. Shit, I'd love functional rail. And maybe this is just grown-up-in-the-desert me, but the threshold for flying is a thousand miles, not 0-400. It's not a european situation at all - I did some work out at WSU and it was six of one, half a dozen of the other. You could go to the airport, wait an hour, get on a plane, fly an hour, get off the plane, get a rental car, drive an hour and be in Pullman... or you could start driving and be there in four hours. That's 285 miles. There will never be high speed rail to Pullman. So there's a 10-hour, $90 train ride. There's also a 23-hour bus ride. Or, you get in the car.